I've revised my estimation of certain entries in the Gundam canon from my recent rewatches. Behold my bad opinions:
Char's Counterattack: I must have been in a bad mood or something the last time I watched this, because I had a way better time with it than I expected. Amusingly, most of the cast goes to war because they're horny: Gyunei and Hathaway are horny for Quess, Quess is horny for Char, and of course Char's horny for Amuro. There's plenty of secondary horny about, but those are the ones that really drive the plot. The body count would probably be a lot lower if everyone would just have a nice wank in their quarters before suiting up. Really helps clear the mind.
Gundam Unicorn: I actually love this series. It feels like it has a lot of insight into the roots of the Federation/Zeon conflict -- maybe those same insights can be gleaned from the previous works, but Unicorn really crystallizes them. The answer to the central mystery is laugh-out-loud stupid, but the series sells it so hard that you kind of want to believe it. Ultimately I can't decide whether to view it as a message of hope or despair for the Universal Century -- here is a society that has discovered the existence of Newtypes but can't think of any use for them other than as weapons. Unicorn presents us with something that could change that status quo... but since it was written after the works that follow it in the timeline, it can't have any meaningful effect on them. Or can it? Is the opening of Laplace's Box the cause of the slow decline of the Federation through F91, Crossbone and Victory, and is that a good thing? It gives rise to the existence of terrifying entities like Cosmo Babylonia and Zanscare, but maybe in the long view those are just missteps on the way to figuring out a proper system of governance. I guess I should watch Reconguista in G if I want to know the answer.
Gundam 0080: Still brilliant and heartbreaking. You know that "WOW, COOL ROBOT" meme where the Gundam shoots its "war is bad" message over the viewer's head? The secret second part of that meme is the message striking and killing poor Bernie Wiseman. Did you know David Hayter voiced Bernie in the dub? It's true! I flipped over to the dub track to spot check it and it's absolutely him. He's not doing his Snake voice, obviously, but you can still hear a trace of it in a couple of syllables.
Gundam 0083: I still have a few more episodes of this to go, but whereas years ago I would have told you it has a pretty good first half before going off the rails in the back half, it is unfortunately actually dumb as a box of rocks all the way through. I hate absolutely every single character. Kou is a pile of wet cardboard mushed into the shape of a man, Nina is a shrieking, weeping lunatic, and every second Monsha is on screen feels like my entire body is on fire. At least it's pretty to look at.
Anyway. As long as I'm riding this wave of Gundam enthusiasm I figure I might as well check out some of the series I've missed in the past 20 years of not really paying attention. I feel like I've heard people speak favorably about one or more of the Gundam Build ______ series, but there's like a half-dozen of them and I don't know what's what. It looks like Build Fighters and Build Divers are separate continuities from each other? What's worth checking out?
